On Rule Breaking, and Semantics
by Aerial312
Summary: McGee learns a bit about Tony and Ziva's history together.


Notes: McGee POV. Attempting to explain my thoughts on Tony and Ziva's history with each other. This flew out of my brain in 45 minutes…

It was a warm spring day, McGee thought, smiling up to the sun. A perfect 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. Things had been slow this week—they still weren't being allowed to work the Port to Port case—so he, Tony, and Ziva were enjoying lunch out on the lawn. A beautiful, peaceful afternoon—if only his teammates would shut up.

"Hummus again?" Tony groaned, pulling half of the pita out of the bag that Ziva held up to him.

"You like hummus," his partner noted from where she lay on the blanket with her head on his thigh.

"Not every day," Tony argued, taking a bite anyways

McGee wondered what would happen if Agent Barrett happened by their little picnic. Tony didn't seem bothered by the prospect, so he supposed it wasn't his place to care.

"This is only the second day we have had hummus and veggies," Ziva declared.

"No meat," Tony grumbled, stuffing the last of the pita into his mouth. She laughed, and reached up to wipe the

"She made you a sandwich?" McGee asked. Since when did Ziva make him lunch?

"She says I eat crap—"

"You do," both McGee and Ziva answered at the same time. Usually it was the greasiest fast food available. Though, looking down at his own lunch—three soggy tacos from the food truck—McGee noted that his own eating habits were slipping again.

Tony shook his head, "So I suggested that if she wanted me to eat healthy, she could make me lunch."

"And she did?" McGee asked incredulously.

Ziva shrugged. "I have been making lunch for myself, because I am sick of the food truck. It is not really more work to make a second one."

Tony nodded with a grin, seemingly having forgotten that not five minutes prior he was complaining about the contents of the sandwich. He sat forward to check his phone, which had just dinged the arrival of a new email.

"Get out of my sun," Ziva told him.

"Get a new pillow," he challenged without missing a beat.

But she didn't move, and after a moment he shifted back, McGee noted. She was down to her tank top, the button-down she'd been wearing in the office discarded on the grass beside her. Her bare arms were spread wide, maximizing her exposure to the sun.

"You know," Tony started, with a leering tone, "when I sit back like you want me to, I can see right down that tank top."

Here we go, McGee sighed. Couldn't they just enjoy their lunch break without needling one another?

"Perhaps that is the idea," Ziva laughed.

Wait, McGee thought. "What?" Apparently, he'd said the last part of that thought out loud, because both Tony and Ziva were now looking at him with those mischievous grins they wore when the liked to fuck with him.

"It is nothing that he has not seen before," Ziva purred, running her finger along Tony's chin. "Is it?"

Tony chuckled, his gaze smoldering as he looked down at his partner.

McGee was turning red in spite of his best efforts not to. He knew they were trying to get a reaction out of him. "But only undercover, right?" he stammered. He wasn't sure they heard him, they were staring at each other so intently. "You guys have never broken Rule 12, have you?" His voice was a little less confident on that last part.

And then it happened. At the same time, Tony answered, "No," while Ziva answered "Tony has a **casual relationship** with Rule 12."

Neither man missed the way she'd stressed 'casual relationship'. Oh boy. So this was how Ziva was when she got jealous. Everyone knew Tony was breaking Rule 12 with Agent Barrett.

Tony took a breath, letting the comment slide. "I think what McGee mean, my ninja—" McGee couldn't help but notice that the nickname, while teasing, was said rather affectionately—"was that we have not broken Rule 12 **together**."

"Hmm…" she pondered, her brow furrowed. Had they broken Rule 12 together?

"Which we haven't…" he tacked on.

She looked up at him thoughtfully, and it was then that McGee knew it was going to be a matter of semantics.

"You're right. We have not," she agreed after a moment.

McGee looked at them curiously.

"Question, McGoober?"

"No…" Sure, he'd always susprected, but maybe he didn't really want to know for sure.

"No?" Tony pushed. "You look like you have questions."

"What's the catch?" McGee heard himself ask. The investigator in him won out.

"Catch?" Tony asked with a grin.

"Obviously, this is a matter of semantics."

Ziva sighed, exchanging a look with Tony that said 'Are we really getting into this?'. Tony shrugged. "Rule 12 is Gibbs' rule," she said.

"And?" McGee asked. He already knew this, of course, so he didn't get where she was going.

She continued, "For his team."

"His agents," Tony corrected.

"What is the difference?" she questioned.

"Well, for one, he never had a problem with McGee and Abby."

Hunh. Well, that was true. "He didn't…" McGee realized, aloud.

"That is beside the point," Ziva sighed.

"What is the point?" McGee asked, impatiently. They exchanged a look. A very heated look. Yeah, they'd definitely slept together. "When did Rule 12 not count?" he asked, trying to get them to the point.

Tony was toying with Ziva's ponytail as he explained, "When Gibbs wasn't our team leader."

McGee thought about that for a moment. "When he went to Mexico. That summer?"

Tony nodded.

"And when we were reassigned,"Ziva added.

Had they really slept together all that time ago—on more than one occasion—and just dropped it because Gibbs was their team leader again?

Tony seemed to read his mind. "Things got complicated, McGee," he noted, with a certain sadness in his voice.

They sure had been through an awful lot together. Relationships with other people. Destructive relationships with other people. They had each had a time when they'd thought they lost the other forever. And now here they sat, casually tangled on the courtyard lawn, with their friendship stronger than it had ever been. He wasn't sure why they'd chosen to open up to him about something they'd kept to themselves for so long. McGee was left with a ton more questions, but as they sat—head on thigh, fingers through hair, having a silent conversation with each other—he knew that they were done sharing with him.

It seemed the real history between Tony and Ziva was far more complicated than anything he could have dreamed up for Agents Tommy and Lisa.

Note 2: I've long thought that Tony and Ziva have a sexual history together, but haven't technically broken Rule 12. Eventually, I'll write the post-"Hiatus" and post-"Judgement Day" scenes I see…


End file.
